A bill will be brought forward for the next stage of reform of the criminal justice system, giving the police and probation services new powers to protect the public from violent offenders and anti-social behaviour

Extract from the Queen's speech

The government wants to ensure that the needs of the victim are given greater consideration in the criminal justice system.

This bill aims to protect the public by returning offenders back to prison upon any breaches of their release licence.

It will also introduce new measures of victim compensation.

MAIN PROVISIONS

TIMETABLE

Responsible department: Home Office

Origin: Commons

Toughen up trial processes when an offender fails to appear in court without good reason

Create new powers to tackle anti-social and violent behaviour and a new offence to deal with violent pornography

Introduce a generic community sentence for young offenders

Make sentencing processes clearer and address in-balances in the process for overturning convictions and releasing offenders

Bring compensation for those wrongly convicted into line with that paid to victims of crime

BACKGROUND

Many of the ideas in the bill are included in the Home Office paper 'Rebalancing the criminal justice system', published in July 2006.

These measures are described in the Queen's Speech as being able to set a clear direction for a system of 'smarter justice', that allows greater opportunity for concerns of the law-abiding public in the criminal justice services they receive.